Posted on 07/07/2004 6:34:05 PM PDT by ninenot
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In the mid-1980s, the National Science Foundation warned that the nation would soon lack enough scientists and engineers to fill the necessary posts in academe -- a forecast that turned out to be wildly inaccurate. Instead, over the past decade, thousands of frustrated researchers have labored in postdoctoral positions at low wages because they could not find jobs in academe or industry.
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Current data suggest that the new predictions may fare no better than earlier ones. In fact, contrary to prevailing wisdom, which fixes blame on poor training in science and mathematics from kindergarten through the 12th grade, record numbers of Americans are earning bachelor's degrees in science and engineering. And unemployment rates in at least some sectors of science and engineering have topped the charts.
"Despite recurring concerns about potential shortages of STEM [scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematics] personnel in the U.S. work force, particularly in engineering and information technology, we did not find evidence that such shortages have existed at least since 1990, nor that they are on the horizon," concluded the RAND Corporation in a report this year.
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In 1986 Erich Bloch, director of the National Science Foundation, warned, "We are not training enough young scientists and engineers." Four years later he wrote, "At the end of the pipeline, too few new Ph.D.'s are being produced, and an increasing fraction -- over 50 percent in engineering and mathematics -- are foreign students." He also noted that "the demand for engineers, scientists, and technicians is growing about twice as fast as supply and will exceed supply by 35 percent in the year 2000."
But it soon became clear that those predictions were about as accurate as long-term weather forecasts. As the 1990s progressed, the lack of science jobs forced increasing numbers of graduate students to continue their training after getting doctorates, sometimes moving from one fellowship to another before landing a more secure position. For example, in 1973 only 27 percent of the people earning biomedical Ph.D.'s went into postdoctoral positions. By 1995 the proportion had jumped to 63 percent.
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In recent years scientists and engineers in certain sectors have found positions scarce, and jobless rates have sometimes exceeded those in the general population. For the first quarter of 2004, unemployment for computer scientists and systems analysts hit 6.7 percent, a record high. Last year the American Chemical Society concluded that "times are becoming very tough for the chemical profession," with unemployment rates at an all-time high. With job announcements growing ever scarcer in journals, the proportion of new Ph.D. chemists entering postdoctoral positions jumped by 10 percent from 2002 to 2003.
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics audited its own success in predicting job needs and found major errors in projections for technical fields. In 1990, for example, the bureau forecast that employment in electrical and electronics engineering would grow by 40 percent by the year 2000 -- but the number of jobs actually decreased by 16 percent. Agricultural and food science had 14 percent fewer positions by 2000, even though the bureau projected an increase of 21 percent.
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While the number of doctorates awarded in science and engineering declined slightly from its peak, in 1998, the number of bachelor's degrees in science and engineering has climbed over the past decade, both in total numbers and for U.S. citizens.
"At NSF, I think, they have a perverse focus on doctorates," says Mr. Lowell. "Doctorates are not the only ones that run our R&D enterprise."
In fact, over the past decade, a slowly growing percentage of bachelor's-degree holders in science and engineering got jobs in those fields without first earning advanced degrees. In engineering, especially, higher-level degrees are not required. According to data collected by the NSF in 2001, 70 percent of engineers entered science-and-engineering jobs with bachelor's degrees.
The growing number of undergraduates studying technical fields also contradicts prevailing notions about why more American students do not get doctorates.
"The place where the science establishment misreads what's going on is that it implies it's always an education problem: Somehow Americans are not getting good schooling" in elementary and secondary schools, says Richard Freeman, a professor of economics at Harvard University. "That's just nonsensical at one level. We have lots and lots of very bright people who could go into science and engineering who don't."
Mr. Freeman, like other economists, looks to dollars to make sense of the trends among graduate students. "They're not studying science," he says, "because they look and say, 'Do I want to be a postdoc paid $35,000 or $40,000 at age 35, with extreme uncertainty working in somebody else's lab, and maybe getting credit for my work and maybe not getting full credit? Or would I rather be an M.B.A. and making $150,000 and hiring Ph.D.'s?'"
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George F. McClure, a retired aerospace engineer who studies employment issues for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers[, says] "The problem is that everybody has focused on the supply side, and very few have focused on the demand side," he says. "People in colleges and universities are concerned with maintaining the pipeline and throughput."
In a case study, Ms. Stephan, the Georgia State economist, has analyzed the growth of the bioinformatics field, generally regarded as one of the hottest areas in science. The number of degree programs blossomed from 21 in 1999 to 74 in 2003.
"There's been a tremendous increase in the number of students in these programs," she says. But, she adds, "we also track job announcements in bioinformatics, and they've been declining."
She sees parallels to other leading fields. "Everybody is talking right now that there'll be lots and lots of jobs in nanotechnology," she says. "I've not seen a convincing case that that is happening, or that it will happen."
Yet graduate schools have an incentive to train ever-increasing numbers of students and postdoctoral fellows because they perform the work on research grants that bring money into universities, Ms. Stephan says. "Academe has a big vested interest here."
Even the National Academy of Sciences, one of the cornerstones of the establishment, has acknowledged the conflicts of interest involved in this issue. "These forecasts of undersupply that did not materialize have led policy makers for graduate training and research support to be highly skeptical of any forecasts and to worry about the self-interest of the forecasters," concluded the academy in a 2000 report.
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A most useful article, forwarded by ZaZona. There is some editing--for the whole enchillada, use the source URL.
Here's more refutation for the FreeTraitor argument that "The US doesn't produce any intelligent life" crap.
Then there's the problem of India ~ don't they have something like 30 million unemployed engineers? No doubt a bunch of smart guys with good educations will figure out something to do eventually, but in the meantime any shortage anywhere can be met by tapping the Indian market.
The guys running academe seem to have missed the Indian thing. They are also missing the China thing.
The effect of easy money -- like an overgain on the feedback loop that ouputs college-trained tech talent.
Here's the real issue: the income of the tenured professors is dependent on there being lots of PhD and PostDoc serfs slaving in the fields, doing the research that brings in the grant money
Unfortunately for US academia, India now has good science/engineering universities too. Why should an Indian go to a US university for his PhD when he can study in India.
The next big "outsourcing" wave will be of research grants to Indian universities
We might add they no longer need to come here and feel like they are feezing to death! Lord only knows what it was like for them to suffer through Northern European climates in the past.
Sometimes a Ph.D. isn't worth more than a bachelor's with experience. Ph.D.s are primarily good for the few academic positions. And most Ph.D.s aren't going to get an academic post.
Wrong analysis at least in some fields. I'm a tenured Professor of Mathematics at a mid-western state university. I'd be happy to see s ahortage of new Ph.D.'s in mathematics: labor shortages tend to keep wage rates up, and at least in mathematics, research grants rarely support more than the P.I.(s).
But of course, that's the point of the article.
You will see all KINDS of screeching (the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, for one) editorials telling us that the US has a cataclysmic shortage of EVERY sort of hard-discipline post-grads.
This "justifies" two things: a continuous increase in the number of H1B visas AND the export of jobs to PRChina and India.
Please note that this has another effect: the employees are FAR cheaper, H1B's here and natives 'over there.'
Now that I've pointed out the common factor (cheap labor) perhaps you understand why some of us are concerned about the lies on the "Free Trade" and "H1B" threads.
Got to keep feeding those universities.
"the work of 100 scientists and 250,000 engineers."
Hey, are you implying that a scientist does the work of 250 engineers?!
Nope. HALF a scientist is worth 125 engineers, by my read.
"They are also missing the China thing."
Miss the communist china thing and we will be gone!
They have already declared their intent to keep a PERMANENT space station above us. That is why President Bush issued his call for increased space program for the USA - which many "conservative" here scoffed at!
We must surpass our enemies or we will be ground under their heels.
HUH??? Can you possible be serious?
When an entrepreneur comes up with and idea dooesn't he need scientists and engineers to implement it?
Just graduated computer science, but am leaning towards broadcasting.
sure, all these entrepreneurs can invent nothing except service industries like Starbucks that pay people low wages.
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